‘All the best do. Even Elvis.’
Conversation developed, files were cleared, Mary encouraged to sit and have a drink. Her inhibitions evaporated. She had not anticipated the warmth, the respect. Nice to be treated as an equal, to find a common denominator. Angelinos were not all ogres. She spoke of her past, found Fletcher Wood and Krista Althouse interested, let her homesickness stoke her enthusiasm, fuel her eloquence. Things had putrefied in the Delta, the magic and the mojo were gone, the hooded men coming by darkness to invade her dreams and her shack, guard their weapons stockpiles, threaten Jesus. Remember your meetin’ with the Forresters, the ghoul with the devil horns and pompom nose had said on that night in Mississippi. She could not forget, had stayed silent. They would harm her if she told tales, feed her and Jesus to the ’gators. By order of the Citizens Council. There were few to mourn her, to notice. Yet she felt safe with these two, far from home, comfortable on the wooden deck. Surely, it could do no harm to mention the story. She wanted to explain her departure, unburden herself, felt compelled to tell them how and why she came to be in Inglewood. Haltingly, the roots of her odyssey emerged.
‘Citizens Council?’ Wood grimaced. ‘That was last century.’
Mary’s knuckles had tightened. She sat upright, spine stiffened by fear. ‘Don’t I know it. But they’re back.’
‘You remember where you found those weapons?’
‘I can’t …’
Wood raised his palms. Pacifistic gesture, calming measure. ‘Okay, Mary, no problem.’
‘What about those tattoos?’ Krista asked quietly. ‘On the man with the black hood.’
‘I’ve said enough.’ She was withdrawing, aware she had gone too far.
‘Please, Mary. It might be important – for you, for Jesus. I want to help. We both do.’
‘He …’ Relief and confusion wrestled in her face. ‘He had a lynching on his chest, Klansmen on one shoulder.’
‘The other shoulder?’
‘Nothing much. Kind of two letters – AA.’
‘Care to draw them, Mary?’ Wood proffered a sheet of paper and a marker pen. ‘You’d be doing me a favour.’
She took the pen, eager to depart while not wishing to disappoint. The sooner she drew, the quicker she could retreat. The ink representation was simple, brief, as crude as the original. No more singing, no more sketching. She collected her wages, extricated herself clumsily and hurried away from the house. Crazy to have trusted anyone. It was a mad, bad-ass city.
Krista leant over the picture. ‘Surprise, surprise. We have ourselves a match. Identical to the shoulder tattoo of my friend in San Quentin.’
‘What does it say to you?’
‘Another sad ex-con, one of a hundred thousand who find salvation, protection, in white supremacy. Aryans sure get around.’
‘The Citizens Council?’
‘There’s no copyright. Any crank could mention it to guarantee a response. Obviously worked on Mary.’
‘Forresters?’
‘New one to me. A basic extrapolation from General Nathan Forrest, Pulaski-based founder of the Klan.’
Wood spun the drawing to face him, traced his forefinger along the curvature of the two letters. ‘A … A. I can narrow it down for you.’
‘To what – blood type, social category, alcohol rehab? Aryan Awareness, Aryan Activist, Aryan Attitude?’
‘A… A,’ he repeated. ‘See the design, the way it slopes? It doesn’t tell us blood type, it doesn’t tell us Aryan anything. It tells us both the freak who scared Mary in Mississippi and the numbnuts on the inside at San Quentin served in the military. All American. It’s the shoulder-flash of 82nd Airborne.’
A clue, a link. La bête humaine, baby, la bête humaine.
* * *
The helicopter, a Schweizer, broad-nosed and stub-tailed, dragonfly-drifted across the Tennessee River and swooped over the green immaturity of northern Alabama’s unripened cotton fields. Nothing too showy. Just another aerial commuter, a businessman from Huntsville or The Shoals in an understated single-engined whirlybird. The lakeside fishermen would not even bother to look up. It ballooned over a rise, curved in a wide radius around forestry land, and dipped tentatively towards a landing site behind a disused timber yard. Dead ground – miles from anywhere, close to nowhere. Flutter, flare and the machine set down gently. No fuss, no attention-seeking.
Three men rested against the side of the pick-up, their arms folded, features hidden by baseball caps and standard-issue aviator shades. They waited for the rotor wash to subside, the blades to wind and whine down, one grinding a glowing cheroot butt beneath a toe-cap, a second clearing his throat with a phlegm-shot to the side before applying a baccy wad. Their leader, centre of the triumvirate, professional field officer for the Forresters, stayed motionless, his gaze fixed on the cockpit. His commander was paying a visit to the front-line.
Pilot’s door open, the figure of Ted Bell emerged, jumping down for a low sprint over. Handshakes and back-slapping hugs, the provision of thermos coffee and a map was unfolded on the vehicle back-flap. Central Alabama spread out, pinned down.
‘What d’you think of my baby?’ Bell jerked a thumb towards the helicopter. ‘Thought I’d bring the single rather than the twin.’
‘Stylish.’
‘It’s got enough added features – thermal CCTV, terrain-matching, ground proximity warning – to let me track a liberal faggot politician in his car anywhere at night.’
‘Can it pick out coloureds?’ General laughter.
‘There’s a special filter on the lens. The sweat-detection system’s coming later. Now, gentlemen.’ He tasted and tipped the coffee, handing back the empty mug. ‘We’ve got work. Airstrip ready?’
‘Affirmative.’
‘Ordnance?’
‘Enough to vaporize every AME church from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from the Deep South to the Great Lakes.’
‘Amateurs firebomb. We’re conducting a full-on military campaign.’
The Forrester grinned. ‘The boys are waitin’ for the signal. Ain’t they, Stig?’
